Jared Harris's Quotes

I never lost an argument and my parents assumed I would be a lawyer. They cast me in that role.

I really wanted to get out of England.

I remember thinking, 'I'll audition just once and if it doesn't work out I'll never think about it ever again.'

I think at some point every actor has practiced their acceptance speech while they're having a shower. It's fun.

I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

I've auditioned for normal characters. But I never get cast.

I've done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though - come on, it's brilliant. I love a good death scene!

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

'Mad Men' is a hard act to follow. Unless you're called Elisabeth Moss, stuff like this only comes along once in your career.

Very few movies I've done I regret being involved in.

You get ideas from other people all the time.

I keep mementos from everything I've done. I've got my cab driver's license from 'Happiness.' I've got a pair of glasses and a belt buckle from playing John Lennon. I've got a pair of sunglasses from playing Andy Warhol... It's all in a box in the garage.

I used to do lots of independent films and for a while I was very content living in New York City and doing independent movies and off-Broadway theater. I loved it, I had a really good time doing that, and I worked on a lot of projects that are very dear to my heart, both plays and films.

I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

I was beginning to think I was typecast in everyone's mind out there as a serial killer. I played a serial killer in one movie, I was the ghost of a serial killer in another and in a third, a computer-generated serial killer. The stage looks pretty good after those roles.

I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

It used to be that you could do these nuggets of a movie and it would attach itself in terms of credibility to your work and the style of work that you did, that people would be interested and curious about you and your work as an actor.

My father was a Catholic, but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

People are fascinated by evil because it's mysterious and it doesn't seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

When you're acting and you need to cry, you want to put yourself in a position where you're trying not to cry, because that is generally what people try and do. They try to hold on to their emotions, they don't want to lose them.

I had led a private life and wanted to die a private death.

It would be ugly to watch people poking sticks at a caged rat. It is uglier still to watch rats poking sticks at a caged person.

Loving an old bachelor is always a no-win situation, and you come to terms with that early on, or you go away.

Overnight I became a cottage industry.